Video Game / Battlefield

aka: Battlefield 2

Specializing in online warfare since 1942.

"Honor. Faith. Land. Oil. Wars are fought for any number of reasons. But on the battlefield, every soldier has to find his own. As things turned out, me and my buddies found a pretty interesting one..."

— Preston Marlowe, Battlefield: Bad Company

A series of First-Person Shooter games by DICE (Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment, based out of Sweden), with help from Electronic Arts and other associated studios. It is DICE's major franchise. Apart from this series, the only other games DICE has released are Mirror's Edge series, the multi-player aspect of the recent modern-set Medal of Honor reboot, and the Star Wars Battlefront reboot series.

These games are notable for being among the first to make large-scale use of mobile vehicles in an FPS game, as well as using large maps, and widespread use of environmental destruction after switching to Frostbite. The games are designed to be played in multi-player mode. The earlier games had no 'single-player' campaign, only multi-player missions with bots. For games set in 'reality' these maps and missions recreated important battles in 1942 and Vietnam. Bad Company, however, changed this, coming with not only a cohesive, new storyline, but a group of notable characters that stuck with you the entire game, with their own distinct personalities and voices. 2042, however, would eschew single-player once again, integrating story elements into the multi-player mode instead.

Due to their Abandonware status, Battlefield 2 and 2142 are not sold online anymore.

See also Project Reality, a famous mod for Battlefield 2 with an emphasis on realism, Frontlines: Fuel of War, made by the same team that made the Desert Combat mod, and The Finals, made by ex-DICE developers and best described as "Battlefield as a game show".

Until Battlefield: Bad Company, all games in the series used the Refractor engine, developed by Refraction Games for use in their video game Codename Eagle (DICE later bought out Refraction Games). After that, DICE switched to using Frostbite Engine (which they also developed), though some of the spin-offs still use Refractor.

Works and Downloadable Content in the Series:

Refractor Era

• Main Series:
  • Battlefield 1942 (2002): The original game set during World War II, it features the most well-known battles of the Western Front, Eastern Front, North African Front and the Pacific Front.
    • Road To Rome: An expansion set during the Italian campaign (1943-1945) with maps ranging from Sicily to Monte Cassino. It added the Italian Army and the Free French as factions.
    • Secret Weapons Of World War II: An expansion that features a variety of seldom-seen and strange prototype vehicles (jet planes most notably) and maps themed after German secret weapons.
    • Desert Combat was a mod set during the 2003 invasion of Iraq between the US military and the Russian-armed Iraqi army. At its height it was more popular than the vanilla game and inspired elements of Battlefield 2 as the mod team were hired to help work on it.
  • Battlefield 2 (2005): The sequel set 20 Minutes into the Future in an intercontinental war between NATO, China, and a fictional coalition of Middle Eastern nations referred to as the Middle Eastern Coalition, over the control of oil and oil routes in mainland China and the Arab and Persian regions.
    • Special Forces: An expansion focused around tactical infantry movement thanks to the addition of zip-lines and grappling hooks with fewer heavy vehicles. It also gave each class a new gun to use in the base game.
    • Euro Forces: An add-on pack that adds maps with a new faction, the European Union, fighting either the PLA or the MEC, complete with their own exclusive weapons and vehicles.
    • Armoured Fury: Another add-on pack that adds huge open maps for heavy vehicular combat, with the maps having the PLA and the MEC invading North America.

• Spin-Offs:
  • Battlefield Vietnam (2004): A spin-off set during the American intervention in Vietnam during the 60s and 70s; unlike the original game, the game encouraged asymmetrical gameplay and had licensed music fitting of the period.
  • Battlefield 2142 (2006): A spin-off set in 2142 in the middle of a new Ice Age, where most of Europe, North America and Asia have become uninhabitable and two major superpowers, the European Union and the Pan-Asian Coalition, are waging war to control the last remaining habitable lands of Earth. It was criticized for being too similar to Battlefield 2 and lacking content.
    • Northern Strike: An add-on pack that added maps set in Northern Europe.

• Free-to-Play Spin-Offs:
  • Battlefield Heroes (2009): A much more cartoony spin-off based in a Played for Laughs version of WWII.
  • Battlefield Online (2010): A free-to-play spinoff specific for the South Korean market; it was essentially a version of Battlefield 2 with additions through use of 2142's version of the Refractor engine.
  • Battlefield Play4Free (2011): Similar to the above but for worldwide markets.

Frostbite Era

• Bad Company Series:
  • Battlefield: Bad Company (2008): A consoles' exclusive and a spiritual sequel to Battlefield 2: Modern Combat set in an Alternate Universe where the United States is at war with the Russian Federation in Eastern Europe for unknown reasons. Unlike past installments, the game's tone was comedic and light-hearted and its advertising campaign made fun of other games like Rainbow Six and Metal Gear Solid 4. The story is set from the point of view of Preston Marlowe, an infantry man that was just recently transferred to B-Company, where criminals and troublemakers are assigned to serve their country as cannon-fodder.
  • Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (2010): A Darker and Edgier sequel and soft-reboot set a few years after the first game. This time Russia is not playing around and is attempting to Take Over the World for reasons that are never elaborated. The story is set mostly in an occupied South America, and has the squad searching for a forgotten Japanese weapon of mass destruction. This time the campaign was streamlined for better pacing by removing the first game's long driving sections and its 24-player multiplayer mode put less emphasis on wide-open maps in favor of more condensed, infantry-friendly maps.
    • Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam: An expansion for Bad Company 2 that acted as a modern, more console-friendly remake of Battlefield Vietnam, including many of the same weapons, vehicles, and the overall tone.

• Main Series:
  • Battlefield 3 (2011): The long-awaited sequel to Battlefield 2 and a full return to form for the franchise with the return of fighter jets, the ability to go prone, big sandbox maps and 64-player online battles on PC (24 for consoles). The story takes place 20 Minutes into the Future with the US at war with an ultranationalist Iranian insurgency and a conspiracy to have the Russian Federation framed for a nuclear attack on NATO soil.
    • Back to Karkand
    • Close Quarters
    • Armored Kill
    • Aftermath
    • End Game
  • Battlefield 4 (2013): A sequel to Battlefield 3 that has much more in common with its predecessor than any prior Battlefield game. Shifting ahead to 2020, the story sees the war between the US and Russia expand to include China, with the player's squad roped into a conspiracy involving China's rightful and peace-loving president and the bloodthirsty admiral trying to remove him from power by any means necessary.
    • China Rising
    • Second Assault
    • Naval Strike
    • Dragon's Teeth
    • Final Stand
  • Battlefield 1 (2016): A prequel set in World War I with multiple short campaigns named War Stories telling the story of different soldiers from different Allied nations against the Central Powers.
    • They Shall Not Pass
    • In the Name of the Tsar
    • Turning Tides
    • Apocalypse
  • Battlefield V (2018): A sequel to Battlefield 1 set in World War II, it includes the multiple short campaigns like its predecessor and the ability to customize the character classes' race and gender among other things in multiplayer.
  • Battlefield 2042 (2021): The series' return to modern combat, set in a crapsack near-future and serving as both a sequel to Battlefield 4 and a Spiritual Successor to Battlefield 2142. Unlike its Frostbite-powered predecessors (discounting 1943), the game will not include a single-player campaign but will be the first game in the Frostbite era to include AI Bots.

• Spin-Offs:
  • Battlefield 1943 (2009): A consoles-only spinoff, essentially a somewhat-simplified remake of 1942 on the Bad Company 2 version of the Frostbite Engine.
  • Battlefield Hardline (2015): Developed primarily by Visceral Games instead of DICE, Hardline takes the series' existing gameplay style and transplants it into a Cops and Robbers setting of Law Enforcement versus Criminals, including several weapons exclusive to one side.
    • Criminal Activity
    • Robbery
    • Getaway
    • Betrayal

Other

• Codename Eagle (1999): A Spiritual Predecessor.
• Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (2005): A more arcade-y reimagining of Battlefield 2 for consoles that includes a single-player campaign with a hotswap mechanic and a 24-player multiplayer mode. It was made with the Renderware Engine.

Please add any examples relating to other sub-series works to their dedicated pages. Information on Battlefield 2/Vietnam/1943 and their DLCs are covered on this page and its subpages, along with series-wide info.

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This series provides examples of:

• Achievement Mockery: The Purple Heart, achieved from a certain kill/death ratio depending on game (1:5 for 1942, 1:4 for 2, and 1:2 for 2142).
• A.K.A.-47: While many guns are named mostly correctly to their real life nomenclature, there are almost as much liberties taken. The Striker shotgun is always called the DAO-12, the ACR being rearranged into ACW-R, the Intervention rifle as the SRR-61 (the name of the Jordanian sniper regiment that use the Intervention), and the age-old mistaking the Arctic Warfare Magnum (L115) as the L96 (Precision Marksman), to name a few.
• An Adventurer Is You: The game uses a class-based system, generally basing the classes off effectiveness at certain ranges against infantry as well as vehicles, and other supportive abilities such as repairing vehicles, healing allies, laying traps or spotting enemies.
  • All of them can drive all of the vehicles, and alone.
    • In both 1 and V vehicles can only be spawned by the pilot/driver/cavalier class, depending on the vehicle. Vehicles no longer simply sit at a team's spawn, waiting for an opportunistic enemy to steal them.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: In order to obtain a developer-exclusive outfit, you need to:
  • Find a message in Belarusian being transmitted as Morse code by a flickering lantern, which is the first clue that there is a secret to find;
  • Find seven little switches hidden throughout the map, and set them in a specific order to light up 20 lanterns in a random temple;
  • Return to the original lantern and press a button on a now-exposed keypad to get another Belarusian Morse instruction from the lantern, directing you to crouch behind a rock in a specific location;
  • Record the low-pitched hum which results from doing that and process it in order to hear a song playing;
  • Perform a alphanumerical conversion on the lyrics according to instructions given by the lantern and use the values in a highly-complicated equation;
  • Finally, input the result into the keypad behind the lantern, which will give you the co-ordinates and procedure for obtaining the suit.
• Artificial Stupidity: The bots, especially in 1942 and Vietnam, are notoriously awful. They got marginally better in the later series.
  • In Desert Combat especially, bots simply cannot use helicopters. They either fly them straight into the air or they drive them straight into the ground. Usually in that order. This is due to the fact that Battlefield 1942 was never designed to have helicopters, and bots will try to see them as regular airplanes instead. This is subverted however in that bots seem to use everything else at least marginally well.
• Attack Drone: The squad sentry and recon drones in Battlefield 2142, and the EOD Bot and MAV from Battlefield 3.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Mobile Artillery in 1942 and Vietnam. If one player mounted the artillery piece, another player with the sniper class could use the binoculars to designate a point on the map. This would show the first player exactly where to aim in order to drop a shell right on that spot. But most of the vehicles you'd want to fire at moved too quickly to be hit by artillery, the shells seemed to do minimal damage to structures, and nobody worked as a team in public games anyway.
    • Still, once you finally nagged the scouts enough to use their binocs to mark a priority target, usually a flag, you could easily zero your gun onto it and then simply leave the gun that way and keep an eye on the map when the camera expired. The moment enemies began capturing it, an area-denying salvo of explosives would generally put a quick end to any mischief.
    • Battlefield 3 introduced an MRLS artillery vehicle into one of the expansions, which averted the trope by removing the need for any spotting by having the impacts show up on the mini-map.
• BFG: Many of the vehicle-mounted guns and shoulder-fired rocket launchers certainly count, but the M95 large-calibre sniper rifle deserves special mention. In Battlefield 2 and Bad Company 1&2 it's easily the biggest and loudest firearm in the game and deals extra damage to lightly armoured vehicles and helicopters. In Battlefield 2, it was also the only gun capable of shooting through bullet-proof glass, allowing players to shoot a pilot out of the cockpit.
• Blinded by the Light: Flashlights in Battlefield 3 act like open nuclear fusion reactors strapped to the bottom of guns. Waving it around wildly in a room will blind anyone; it's even blinding in the middle of the day.
  • Ever looked into a Surefire gunlight? They blind, a lot.
• Bloodless Carnage: There is no gore whatsoever, although little sprays of blood do appear with some mods. Battlefield: Vietnam has blood (without modifications).
• Boom, Headshot!: Played straight. Sniper rifles are a one-hit kill, and other small arms deal more damage when fired at the noggin.
• Bottomless Magazines: Played straight for mounted weapons as well as vehicle weapons (with the exception of the main gun on tanks & APC's, though the secondary machine guns still exhibit this). They never seem to run low on ammo, just over-heat.
  • Standing next to an ammunition case in 1942 is basically this.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory:
  • People who purchased the Special Forces addon received two weapon unlocks per rank, instead of one. This was then subverted because players who didn't buy the addon could only use the SpecOps weapons by prying them from others' cold dead hands. This has resulted in some cases of teamkilling.
  • There was a trick for players without the game to gain the same ability. They just simply had to log in on a computer with the expansion installed, play a bit, and they would gain the ability to have two unlocks.
  • Bad Company was going to roll out a program where players could purchase new guns with real money. This triggered a large backlash, so it was scrapped, but the idea returned in the form of an Old Save Bonus in Battlefield 2, where having positively owned a prior Battlefield game unlocked the M1 Garand.
  • Now played straight with the "shortcut" packs for Battlefield 3 onward, which gives the purchasers instant access to any weapon for that kit, or even all of them. Needless to say, this is somewhat unbalanced for those who don't spend cash on their games, leading to starting players having the best kits.^note Of course, just having the "best" weapons doesn't automatically make you more skilled, just slightly more deadly, so the shortcut packs really only increase your options, not your abilities.
• Boring Yet Practical:
  • The AK-47 is Battlefield 2's only weapon that kills armored infantry in four hits without some sort of handicap limiting its effectiveness to a specific niche. It's also the default Chinese assault rifle.
  • Used as designed, the MAV basically amounts to getting points for watching your teammates kill enemies. But considering that players can also earn roadkills with the gadget, it occupies both extremes of the scale.
• Car Fu: Possible in most of the games. Exaggerated in some games with Tank Fu!
• Color-Coded Characters: While it varies from game to game, every faction uses a different color of camouflage on their troops and vehicles for easier identification.
• Colonel Badass:
  • In the earlier games, one could apply to become the commanding officer of their respective side, which brought all sorts of benefits (such as ordering artillery strikes in your area or aerial recon). That being said, while the player did not gain points for it like a rank and file soldier, when push came to shove he was no less capable of kicking some serious ass on his own than before he became the ranking officer.
  • In Battlefield 3, various flavors of Colonel are the highest rank one can attain, and basically signify that the player has earned most of the unlockable items.
• Combat Medic: Everyone in the game with healing abilities can still try to kill you just as hard as you try to kill them, including with their Magical Defibrillator in Battlefield 2 and subsequent games.
  • Battlefield: Bad Company takes this to its logical extreme by giving medics light machine guns as their default armament, and are able to get a tool to call down mortar fire. The sequel just gives them the LMGs on the combat side, with the mortar strikes given to the Recon class.
  • Battlefield 2142 and Battlefield 3 combined the previous Assault and Medic classes into an Assault class armed with the usual assault rifle, and a medical kit consisting of health packs plus a defibrillator. Several DICE employees have even referred to this combination as a Combat Medic in interviews. The main difference here is that the 2142 Assault troopers always have their medkit handy, while Battlefield 3 Assault troopers always have their defibrillator (once unlocked). Battlefield 4 allows you to swap out any of the gadgets for the class, allowing for your own ratio of Combat to Medic, although since you can only pick one of the two offensive options (either Grenade Launcher or underbarrel shotgun) you'll always have some ability to heal or revive teammates.
  • Battlefield 1 and Battlefield 5 bring the Medic class back, replacing the Engineer class, whose gear is scattered between the Assault and Support classes. Medics in Battlefield 1 carry self-loading and assault rifles, many of which can be equipped with scopes, making them better suited to longer-range engagements, while the Medic in Battlefield V's Alpha can choose between either the scoped Gewehr.43 DMR or the tried and true MP.40.
• Cool Mask: Several games in the series have these as available clothing customization options for the player-character; ranges from a simple bandanna, to ski masks, even gas masks.
  • In Battlefield 1, the Support, Flamethrower, and Sentry classes all wear unique masks, which vary by faction and theater.
• Cool Ship: The USS Essex, known affectionately as the "Iron Gator" by her crew, lugs the USMC around in Battlefield 2 and 3. Battlefield 2: Special Forces even featured a level where it was raided by enemy special forces. Presumably, it survived.
  • Battlefield 3 added Nimitz-class aircraft carriers in the single-player mission "Going Hunting" as Shark 4-6 and Shark 4-2's mothership.
  • Battlefield 4's campaign centers around the Valkyrie, a fictional America-class amphibious assault ship that a number of the protagonists call home.
• Crew of One: Everyone can at least drive or fly any vehicle, though some vehicles require another player to fire their weapons, some vehicles can have more than one gunner, and some vehicles can carry passengers (every game in the series so far).
  • Of course, any player can also man any portion of the vehicle - just hotswap, and you can gun down people pestering your humvee or tank (though you're vulnerable to more rocket fire, due to the vehicle stopping because of a lack of a driver). This also leads to certain gunship pilots swapping seats in midair in order to launch the gunner's TV-guided missiles.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The "anti-tank" class in Battlefield 2 suffers from this. The ability to attack vehicles from afar comes at the price of being horrible at fighting off infantry.
  • This is somewhat averted by the vanilla unlock for the AT class in Battlefield 2, the DAO. As a semi-auto shotgun with 12 rounds is it absolutely devastating at close range. Beyond approximately six inches it is pretty useless though. Another example?
  • Also unexpectedly suffered by the Assault class in Battlefield 2, which is meant to be the game's plain combat-oriented rifleman class, only to end up relatively less-played because it's only good at infantry vs infantry combat and useless against any vehicle that isn't a transport car. Several other classes can do that while also having additional useful abilities. When the Special Forces expansion introduced the game breaking G36E it caused a mass exit from Assault to Medic because the medic heal ability is much more useful than the nerfed grenade launcher. Unsurprisingly later games in the series made sure to give the Assault more useful and unique abilities and equipment, Battlefield 2142 eventually decided to combine the two classes into one character to give players choice over which type to use, until Battlefield 1, which brought back the medic class and made the Assault a buffed version of Battlefield 2's anti-tank.
• Critical Existence Failure: You can be down to one health point, but you'll still be in fighting condition until you fall two feet. Vehicles play this mostly straight, but begin to smoke as they take damage. It causes the screen to grey out and have blood seep in at the edges in Bad Company 2 though, making you nearly blind in snowy maps on low health.
  • Crashing into an enemy vehicle headed your way at full speed, for some reason, blows you far and away in Bad Company.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Battlefield 1943 and Bad Company 2 have almost the exact some control scheme except that the Melee attack and Switch Weapons buttons are reversed. More than one player has accidentally brought a Bazooka to a knife fight as a result.
  • Try going between Battlefield 1942/Battlefield:Vietnam/Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, and Bad Company 2, then switching weapons with the number keys. Chances are you'll get a medkit when you wanted a grenade, or a grenade launcher when you wanted the assault rifle, or a defibrillator when you wanted the medkit...hell, 2142 alone is rife with this due to how hand grenades are now an unlock and all the way down on number 7, and the scroll wheel weapon selection reflects this.
  • 1942 and Vietnam use the number row for switching seats in vehicles, with the F-keys used for shouting orders and warning players. Battlefield 2 onward uses the F-keys for switching seats in vehicles, since the number row is used for switching weapons in certain passenger seats and the F-key radio system has been replaced by the Commo Rose.
  • 2142 and later merge the parachute and jump keys. Battlefield 2 and earlier have them separate. Forgetting this fact can be a fatal error.
  • On a similar note, 2142 and earlier have a dedicated keybind to pick up dropped kits/weapons. Bad Company 2 instead merges it with the Use/Enter Vehicle key. Battlefield 3 uses the Reload key.
• Death from Above: Artillery and air vehicles. Also, supply- and vehicle drops.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Air vehicles in any of the games.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Present in all games of the series (except Heroes), but the amount of spread largely depends on the size and weight of the gun. Generally speaking, pistols and SMGs are the least affected, while light machine guns and sniper rifles suffer the most.
• Drives Like Crazy: Everyone, especially in Battlefield 2, where you can control fighter jets.
  • Taken to its logical extreme with Battlefield 2's scout helicopters. Flying a littlebird sideways full throttle through a maze of trees with barely enough space to fly and being only inches from the ground, while simultaneously taking out a squad of enemy infantry? All the time.
    • That's not that far off from actual military attack chopper tactics. Flying nap-of-the-earth is highly advised.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: The entire premise of Special Forces expansion pack for Battlefield 2 is based on this premise.
• Enemy Exchange Program: None of the tanks and helicopters in the games spawn locked, so although each side has its own vehicles, you need to rely on the color of the player's name above the vehicles to determine which vehicles to shoot at.
• Everything Breaks: Destruction of micro and macro scales (the latter is known as Levolution) is present in the games since Battlefield: Bad Company on various levels.
• Excuse Plot: Aside from a brief mention of a war for oil on one map, virtually no explanation is given as to why the war in Battlefield 2 is being fought.
  • This triggered some serious Epileptic Trees on fan forums.
  • Neither the reason why the US is invading Russia in Bad Company.
  • Or why Russia is going apeshit on the entire world in Bad Company 2.
  • It's probably being fought over oil.
  • A throwaway line in Bad Company suggests it's being fought over natural gas.
  • That being said, the Bad Company games had an actual reasonable single-player campaign with an actual plot. The multiplayer was more unexplained at first.
• Face Plant: Several games in the series will automatically put player characters in a head-down skydiving pose if they fall from a certain height. If you don't have a parachute equipped or don't deploy it in time, this can result in an invariably fatal faceplant.
  • As a result of the Ragdoll Physics used in most of the games, characters will occasionally faceplant when killed.
• Fake Longevity: The requirements for Battlefield 2 ranks were changed when it was pointed out that the #1 player in the world (who was really a team of guys sharing an account), would take over 2 years to even reach the General's ranks, let alone progress through them.
• Gatling Good: No Blackhawk helicopter would be complete without those. Battlefield 2's Cobra attack helicopter and its Chinese counterpart also sported a gatling-style cannon for the gunner. Also mounted in pairs on EU battlewalkers in 2142.
  • And, of course, the A-10 Warthog with its powerful and deadly GAU-8 Avenger.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: More like zipline crossbow, for some classes in Battlefield 2: Special Forces. Other classes have a thrown grappling hook used to climb up onto the roof of buildings.
• Grenade Spam: There's a video for Modern Warfare that decries the use of Grenade Spam in the game, Fight Against Grenade Spam. Yeah, FAGS. Not wanting to be outdone, Battlefield came up with its own video pointing out that this tactic won't work and called it FRAGS: Friends Really Against Grenade Spam. But as anyone who has played Operation Metro in Battlefield 2 would know, there is no way to stop grenade spam.
• Griefer: Because both killing and reviving were worth a point, farmers would work in pairs, one on each team. They would find a schmuck who was off by himself (usually a sniper) and stab him, revive him, and stab him again. Because the interface would keep resetting, it was nearly impossible for the victim to escape.
  • With all other forms of teamkilling disabled, griefers can still rely on empty moving vehicles.
  • Players across teams can also farm Titan objectives in 2142. Lone players can also force an air transport to glitch through the Titan deck, destroying their own Titan early.
  • In Bad Company 2 some players encourage the use of Tracer Darts on their fellow Recons that tend to camp during objective based game types (usually when the Recon in question is on Attacker). Players on both sides can see the glow of the dart, giving the opposing team an easy kill.
• Guns Do Not Work That Way: Several accounts, but the most notable are RPG-7s with homing warheads and an MG-3 with an ammo box that blocks the ejection port, and magically ejects brass to the right instead of downward.
• Gun Porn: Later Battlefield games likes to include a huge number of guns, both famous and obscure, all researched, modeled and animated with a high level of detail. Battlefield 4 itself had over 100 guns!
• Historical In-Joke: During the "Battle of Hue" on Battlefield: Vietnam, you can hear the infamous Hanoi Hannah.
  • The designers are also fond of taking sound bytes from military-related videos. "I'll get you ice cream for dinner" was stripped from a helicopter gun camera recording and mixed into the UAV walla in Battlefield Bad Company 2.
• Hitscan: Averted, from a distance, you have to follow your target.
• Improvised Weapon: Some supposedly benign abilities of commanders in Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142
  • The defibrillators through 2 to Bad Company 2. Its ability is hinted at in the description in 2. One lame thing about in 2142, is that it wouldn't give you the dogtags that a knife kill would.
  • Pre-patches, the 2142 Drop Pods were absolutely lethal "weapons" against some vehicles.
    • Pods can still be used as a hilarious way to finish off damaged vehicles that are running away. If that doesn't quite do it, just drop your best explosive device on it, or put an anti-armor warhead into the roof.
  • Even now, a commander can (if lucky) drop a supply crate on a vehicle, destroying it or heavily damaging it. Focused snipers also prove quite squishy.
  • Another example is the ever popular 'cartillery', which involves supply dropping light jeeps onto unsuspecting campers. Not to useful for attacking vehicles, but still hilarious to watch/perform. This also comes in the form where one of the players involved would stick as much C4 as the Assault member cared to supply, and then detonates AFTER it lands, or midair if you feel like screwing with an unsuspecting helicopter pilot.
  • Also quite common is the tactic of throwing multiple explosives onto the hood of a really fast vehicle (C4 on Jeeps in most games and RDX on FAVs in 2142) then ramming it into an enemy vehicle at full speed. Usually they bail out. For added bonus, in 2142 you can get an Engineer to throw a vehicle tracking radar device on the car, giving you a guided missile.
  • Ramming ships with larger ships generally works well in Battlefield 1942, especially when you ram a submarine with a destroyer, or a destroyer with a carrier or a carrier with a battleship.
  • Up to 2142, parachutes—slightly known for their ability to help players stomp infantry—prove quite implacable to air vehicles or freefallers above you.
• Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: The games goes more for the Invisible Wall as described below, but your character is able to jump over lots of stuff, though there's no 'climb' option.
• Invaded States of America: The Armored Fury Booster Pack has maps set in the Eastern US and Alaska. Bad Company 2 has maps set in Alaska.
• Invisible Wall: Battlefield 1942 and 2 makes you take damage when leaving the map, while playing a radio message telling you that deserters will be shot. In the later Battlefield titles, leaving the field for too long is an instant suicide. 2142 did the damage method, but later patched it to be an insta-death. Air vehicles have a larger map to go on in some games however, but still are subject to this trope if they go pass their borders. And if you are forced to eject in a no-zone, you're as good as dead.
• It's Raining Men: That Universal Driver's License comes with a parachute; there are transport aircraft and some spawn points are set in the air; 2142 adds landing pods to the mix.
  • It can also be raining FAVs, Humvees, and Vodniks, if a hacker gets into the server and hacks the vehicle drop feature.
  • 1943 also gives the achievement and an in-game Stamp 'Parachutist' for spending 2 seconds using one. 2142 gives you a HALO award after spending ten seconds in parachute.
  • The first two sets of Rush objectives in Battlefield 3's Damavand Peak are at the top of a mountain. The third is at its base. Helicopters (and the occasional Humvee) join the plunge.
• Friendly Fireproof: Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield 1943, and Battlefield Play4Free have no friendly fire. In some servers for other games, friendly fire can be disabled.
• Lighter and Softer: Battlefield Heroes eschews Battlefield's more realistic gameplay for pure Rule of Fun. Check the Rule of Fun example below for elaboration.)
  • It should be noted that Bad Company is a first person shooter for next generation consoles with a more or less happy ending; something of a rarity these days.
    • Bad Company 2 is same lovable nincompoops from the first game, totally in-character, dropped headfirst into a Darker and Edgier plot, but it's still Lighter and Softer than Modern Warfare 2.
    • It should be noted that Battlefield's developer often cites the rule of fun in their interviews and have done so many times over the last 9 years that "balance and fun come before realism". The Rule of Fun applies to ALL Battlefield games, to varying degrees. Only bandwagon fans think it's anywhere near realistic.
• Machinima: Stunt videos and some musical ones; many of the in-game videos in 2142 are exemplary for their quality and almost total reliance on the game engine.
• Magic Tool: Used by the Engineer class to repair tanks, clear mines, etc.
• Magical Defibrillator: Used by the Medic class in Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142 and Play4Free. A 50 cal bullet to the brain could be fixed by a jolt of electricity.
  • It can also be used to kill people.
  • In Battlefield 2 and 2142, at least, some things would kill you sufficiently dead that you couldn't be resurrected, such as artillery. Not so in Bad Company 2.
• Master of None: The assault class in Battlefield 2. Everything he does, a medic or spec-ops can do just as effectively if not even better.
• Nerf: At least one character class or vehicle per game tends to be overpowered at release and has to be toned down in subsequent patches.
• Middle Eastern Coalition: Battlefield 2 is the Trope Namer for this.
• Night-Vision Goggles: The player's standard equipment The Battlefield 2's Special Forces Expansion Pack includes night-vision goggles which can be of great benefit on pitch-dark night time maps.
• Nitro Boost: Battlefield 2's jet fighters have a self-recovering boost meter representing their afterburners, and introduced the Sprint Meter; Battlefield 2142 has boosting cars.
• Nose Art: The American A-10 Thunderbolts in Battlefield 2 sport a warthog face on the nose of the aircraft. The Apaches introduced in the Special Forces pack have a shark mouth on the nose too.
• Obvious Rule Patch: The first patch to Battlefield: Vietnam fixed some serious balance issues; Battlefield 2142 patches are a litany of attempts to fix level geometry to stop people glitching their way inside Titans.
• Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: Just look at the top of the page! The numbers don't indicate a proper order at all, and just try to not mix up Battlefield: Vietnam (standalone game, second in the series) with Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam (Expansion Pack), among other things. And God help you if you mix up Bad Company 2 or Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (PS2 and Xbox Spin-Off) with the PC Battlefield 2 in front of a very picky Battlefield fan...
• Oh, Crap!: Battlefield 2 is simply one moment after another. The roar of incoming jet engines, and the sight of an F-18 emptying its entire bomb payload on top of you; the screech of incoming artillery; the rat tat tat of an Mi-28's main cannon... death is imminent.
  • Also, the horrifying, whizzing sound of a billion incoming artillery shells. You have less than a second before your body flies through the air.
  • The various vehicle alarms and missile warnings; the *s-snikt* of a knife being drawn from behind you; that car racing towards you in plain sight…
• One Bullet Clips: Zig-zagged across the series.
  • Earlier games avert it completely, up through Battlefield 2142.
  • Later games from Battlefield: Bad Company onward play it completely straight.
• One-Hit Kill: The laser designator in Battlefield: Bad Company will destroy any vehicle or enemy on a direct hit - though it can only be initiated on an enemy vehicle, you control the missile that comes down yourself, so it can be targeted towards enemy players.
  • If a knife hits you as an infantryman in 2, 2142 or Bad Company 2, you are dead. Certain other games take a few slices to kill, with the exception of Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII's throwing knives. Because of lag in 2 and 2142, it may appear that it takes more than one stab to kill a player, but this isn't the case.
  • Boom, Headshot! by most sniper rifles, unless it's a Barrett, in which case any part of the body works.
  • Don't be in a building if it collapses in Bad Company 2.
  • Getting hit by AT rockets when on foot in 2 and 2142.
  • The APC's mortar in 2142.
  • Under no circumstances should you try to get directly by explosives blowing up as an infantryman if you want to live.
  • Shotguns at close-enough ranges.
    • Shotguns with slugs are capable of one hit killing everyone from any distance if aimed well enough.
  • The battleships' 16" guns.
  • Don't be in a vehicle when it blows up.
  • What we're saying is be very careful in this game.
• One-Man Army: Averted throughout the series in multiplayer. Pretending to be Arnold Schwarzenegger and trying to win the war by yourself WILL get you killed in very short order, not to mention pissing off your teammates.
  • It is possible to work effectively while alone, but the key is not to be in this mindset. Skilled players, especially Recons, can be very effective at harassing enemy spawn points through careful use of hit and run tactics, and can also make themselves useful by spotting enemy vehicles. Battlefield 2 with it's commander assets was particularly open to this kind of behind enemy lines gameplay, as one spec ops player could spend their time using c4 to blow up the commander assets, harass enemy soldiers waiting for a vehicle to spawn, hunt down the commander, or steal any vehicle that respawns with no-one to use it.
• Orange/Blue Contrast: The series started using this trope with the cover art from Bad Company 2, and it was then reused for the cover arts of Battlefield 3 and 4.
  • Battlefield 3 actually implemented it in the game itself:
    • Blue icons are used for the friendly team, orange for the opposing.
    • The menu interface.
    • Game/DLC posters. Orange for gunfire/explosions, blue for cooler atmospheric areas.
    • Maps like Operation Metro and Death Valley are washed in blue, while Bandar Desert and Tallah Market is washed in orange.
    • Explosions and muzzle flashes, are notably orange in color.
• PVP Balanced: Battlefield Heroes has been claimed to eschew realism very far for balance - all vehicles are supposed to be fun options and easily countered by all players. Also, the standard grenade launcher for Assault class in Battlefield: Bad Company does very little damage to enemy players and exists for utilizing the game's environment destruction system. (Indeed, it will give you a Cosmetic Award for killing, or rather, finish off, 3 players in one match with it.) That is, blow holes in stuff that are enemy players, or blow up stuff that aren't enemy players.
  • This also results in the A-10 and Su-39 being fairly poor aircraft in Battlefield 2.
  • Throughout the entire series, rocket launchers have always had almost no splash damage. This is to prevent players from pulling a Macross Missile Massacre on infantry, because rocket launchers frequently come with about 5 rockets.
• Qurac: Many of the locations shown in Battlefield 2 and the Bad Company series are set in generic middle-eastern locations, such as the notorious Strike at Karkand map from Battlefield 2.
  • Karkand is making a return as downloadable content for Battlefield 3.
  • Battlefield 3 averts this somewhat: the cities and countries are all named and nonfictional.
  • Also averted in Battlefield 2042 with the two revealed Middle Eastern maps so far were specifically said to be set in Egypt and Qatar.
• Recurring Riff: Most of the games in the Battlefield series base their Main Theme around the Theme of Battlefield 1942, but each has their own unique genres that fit the individual games' theme. The singleplayer campaign trailer for Battlefield 1 even mixes the main theme's beat into the otherwise unrelated trailer song, Suns and Stars. A complete compilation can be found here.
  • Orchestral: Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, Battlefield Bad Company, Battlefield 1943, Battlefield 1.
  • Electronic: Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4.
  • Rock: Battlefield 2142, Battlefield Hardline.
• Reliably Unreliable Guns: Most machine guns and vehicle-mounted automatic weapons will overheat and seize up temporarily if fired in prolonged bursts.
• Reverse Grip: How knives are held in Vietnam, 2142, Play4Free, Heroes, and Battlefield 3. Dima from Battlefield 3's campaign does this with his fancy Spetnaz hatchet.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: The strongest handgun in Battlefield 2142 is a revolver with 8 shots that can be upgraded to hold 10. It also reloads by removing the entire cylinder. This is really a moot point though, as there are only two handguns in the game, and the EU just has higher power, lower ammo capacity weapons than the PAC in general.
  • Played straight in Bad Company 2 with the MP412 Rex, which can drop an enemy in just a couple of shots. The flip side is the slow rate of fire and low ammo capacity.
  • Battlefield 3 has both the aforementioned MP412 Rex and the Taurus .44 Magnum. These, along with two auto-revolvers return in Battlefield 4
  • Due to its World War 1 setting, Battlefield 1 features a lot of revolvers: one for each class, which are invariably hand canons in their own right, and with all expansions installed, a total of three which can be unlocked for all classes. For bonus points, the Assault class's Gasser revolver was actually obsolete in World War 1.
• RPG Elements: Present from Battlefield 2 and onward - though generally players could get most of everything and necessities for all classes. Battlefield Heroes, however, takes this even further, having a set number of characters for each account, those characters having a specific class and each of those characters having levels to unlock different character abilities and clothing to wear, in an very MMORPG-style manner.
  • Pretty much ditched for 1943, you get points for kills and such but all they do is increase your rank which has no bonuses other than showing you have a large number of points.
• Rule of Fun: Battlefield Heroes has been said to be built purely on this, making very atypical compared to the rest of the series - characters use third-person to allow you to see your character, have typical FPS unrealistic-durability and no friendly fire, all classes will be self-sufficient, all vehicles are supposed to be easily countered by all players, and you can ride on a plane's wing.
• Selective Historical Armoury: See the trope page for details.
• Sprint Meter: Used in 2 and 2142. Later games just give you infinite sprint.
• Shoot the Medic First: The medical abilities of players in the Battlefield series follow the reason why you should invoke this trope to the letter. But watch out while trying to.
  • Averted in 1943, where the health systems was switched to Call of Duty-style Regenerating Health and the Medic class was removed as a result.
  • More often averted in public matches, where eager medics revive teammates only for those players to be immediately re-killed.
• Shout-Out: You can hear broadcasts from Good Morning, Vietnam in certain spawning points of some maps of Battlefield: Vietnam.
  • As noted under Theme Music Power-Up, several of the song choices on Vietnam's soundtrack were inspired by war movies.
  • One of the trailers for Bad Company was a parody of a Gears of War trailer, including the song Sweetwater sings.
• Shown Their Work: Well, whoever worked on this piece of artwork for Battlefield 3 apparently did, considering what off-duty soldiers found in it.
• Soft Water: Sort of. While you'll take less damage falling into water, you'll still die (or go into "critically wounded" mode) if you hit water from a high enough height. In 2 and 2142, if you hit the water from a high height, you'll go into this state, but you'll never be outright killed like if you hit land.
• Suicide Mission: The whole point of B Company.
  • Also, Operation Aurora.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: In theory, at least. In practice, air vehicles typically lay waste to everything when away from AA guns.
• Take That!: The Ballad of Dedicated Servers asks if the phasing out of dedicated servers (It Makes Sense in Context) is the modern way of making warfare.
  • A bit of a Running Gag in the franchise is to mock the latest installment of the Modern Warfare series.
• Theme Music Power-Up: Battlefield Vietnam included the rather awesome feature that every vehicle was equipped with a radio, allowing you to play soundtrack songs for the other players to hear as you drove around. (Including, obviously, "The Ride of the Valkyries" and "Surfin' Bird") This was then subverted as actually doing so was a great way to get yourself shot.
• The Power of Friendship: Do stuff together with your squadmates, makes winning easier and even gives more points in the later games of the series.
• Those Wacky Nazis: The National Army in Battlefield Heroes is a collection of various Nazi and generally German stereotypes. It even references the trope, by naming one of the weapons "The Wacky Machine Gun".
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Killing infantry with an anti-tank weapon will prevent them from being revived by a medic.
• Tie-In Novel: Battlefield 3: The Russian, a continuation of said game's single-player campaign written by military writer/former SAS operator Andy McNab.
• Title Drop: From the trailers came "I belong to Bad Company. I don't wanna end up in some good company!" Also, the page quote. To be fair, it's kinda hard to go through a military shooter and not legitimately say "battlefield" anyway.
  • Inverted in Battlefield 2 when you attempt to leave the area:
    Radio message: Are you going anywhere soldier? Do not leave the field of the battle.
• Translation Convention: The player has the option to have non-English-speaking armies speak in their native language or have their speech "translated" into perfect English.
  • In Battlefield 2, toggling the switch would simply make every character sound like an American Marine, which was actually a gameplay disadvantage because you couldn't use all the audio cues any more. Bad Company 2 averts this by making the Russians speak accented English.
• Tropical Island Adventure: 1942, 1943 and V cover the Pacific Theater of World War II, with maps sets in Wake Island, Iwo Jima, the Solomon Islands and the Philippines. 4 also has the USMC unsuccessfully assaulting a PLA-controlled Singapore in it's campaign.
• Unbreakable Weapons: All of them, though kits players can drop can be destroyed by explosives or bullets. Lampshaded with its weapon entry on the knife in Bad Company 2, saying it is designed to stay sharp indefinitely and is guaranteed to not rust, bend or break.
• Universal Driver's License: Every game in the series.
• Urban Warfare: Strike at Karkand is considered to be one of the best urban maps in modern FPSes and that's not even mentioning many other maps in the series that take places in some of world's largest cities such as Tehran, Paris, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
  • Battlefield 2042 also set to continue this trend by including two urban maps of Hourglass (set in Doha, Qatar) and Kaleidoscope (set in Incheon, South Korea) as part of its initial roster.
• Unwinnable: Particularly coordinated teams tend to block off the road leading out of enemy bases with a ring of tanks, engineers, and AA vehicles once they've captured all the spawn points. This makes it pretty much impossible for the opposing team to gain any ground, especially if they're being bombed at the same time. Heroes and Play4Free spawn players close to idle points when their team have no ground specifically to prevent this from happening.
• Regenerating Health: Present in 1943, Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3, and Battlefield 4. While health regen for 1943 and the single player portions of the later games is almost lightning-quick, it's nerfed in multiplayer and outright removed in hardcore mode as to not render medkits useless as it did in 1943. Battlefield 1 featured perk-like Specializations specifically built around this autohealing system, with some speeding it up and the "Reciprocity" Specialization healing Medics whenever they heal a player. Battlefield 5 severely nerfs the healing system in all game modes, in order to make the Medic more useful.
• Weaponized Car: The Special Forces expansion pack of Battlefield 2, and Battlefield 3 and 4 all include "technicals"; pickup trucks fitted with machine guns or SPG-9 recoilless rifles.
• What the Hell, Player?: Friendly fire will be quickly met with unhappy responses.
  • I'M FRIENDLY!
  • FRIENDLY GODDAMNED FIRE
  • CEASE FIRE!! FRIENDLIES!!
  • WAKE THE FUCK UP! BLUE ON BLUE!
  • HEY IT'S ME, YOU STUPID FUCK!
  • FRIENDLYGODDAMNEDFIRE!!!!!
  • FRIENDLIES OVER HERE!! C'MON!!
  • OI!! IDIOT!
  • HEY, DUMBSHIT, IT'S ME!!
  • HEY!! I'M WITH YOU!!
  • DON'T SHOOT!
  • Jesus Christ, YOU'RE SHOOTING AT YOUR OWN MEN!
• World War III: In Battlefield 2, Battlefield: Bad Company, and Battlefield 3. They probably aren't the exact same war, either.
• You ALL Look Familiar: The Battlefield games typically only had 3 different faces for each side.
  • Averted in Battlefield 1 which features reasonably distinct models for all classes for each faction, including race changes and in the case of the Imperial Russian scout, the first playable female soldier in multiplayer.

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